James Cameron Nearly Directed a ‘Nastier’ Jurassic Park

In a fascinating tease at what might have been, James Cameron, in a recent interview with The Huffington Post, revealed that he came very, very close to adapting Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and that Steven Spielberg beat him in securing the rights “by a few hours.”

What would a Cameron-directed Jurassic Park have been like?

“I’d have gone further,” says the Avatar director. “Nastier, much nastier… [M]ine would have been ‘Aliens’ with dinosaurs.”

Of course, Spielberg’s take on the property is widely considered to be a modern classic and even Cameron admits that he probably wouldn’t have been able match its cinematic charm.

“[W]hen I saw the film,” he continues, “I realised that I was not the right person to make the film, he was. Because he made a dinosaur movie for kids… Dinosaurs are for 8-year-olds. We can all enjoy it, too, but kids get dinosaurs and they should not have been excluded for that. His sensibility was right for that film.”

Spielberg’s Jurassic Park was released in 1993, spawning two additional sequels. The following year, Cameron released True Lies before turning his attention to 1997’s Titanic.